I first saw this list on Bookeywookey’s blog, who found it on Pages Turned. It’s taken from the Times. I don’t necessarily agree that these are the 50 greatest and I haven’t heard of some of them. The authors I’ve read are shown in bold.
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Philip Larkin
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George Orwell
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William Golding
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Ted Hughes
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Doris Lessing
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J R R Tolkien
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V S Naipaul
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Muriel Spark
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Kingsley Amis
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Angela Carter
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C S Lewis
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Iris Murdoch
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Salman Rushdie
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Ian Fleming
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Jan Morris
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Roald Dahl
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Anthony Burgess
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Mervyn Peake
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Martin Amis
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Anthony Powell
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Alan Sillitoe
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John Le Carre
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Penelope Fitzgerald
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Phillipa Pearce
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Barbara Pym
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Beryl Bainbridge
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J G Ballard
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Alan Garner
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Alasdair Grey
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John Fowles
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Derek Walcott
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Kazuo Ishiguro
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Anita Brookner
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A S Byatt
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Ian McEwan
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Geoffrey Hill
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Hanif Kureshi
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Iain Banks
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George Mackay Brown
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A J P Taylor
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Isaiah Berlin
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J K Rowling
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Philip Pullman
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Julian Barnes
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Colin Thubron
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Bruce Chatwin
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Alice Oswald
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Benjamin Zephaniah
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Rosemary Sutcliffe
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Michael Moorcock
